The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

Yay Internets! Tonedeff—the artist who won Lollapalooza’s Last Band Standing over a year ago but never received the 10k prize package from Gibson—has received his prize. He emailed us today and wrote, “Thanks for covering the story and your support. Your blog made a HELL of a difference. Expect a shout out on my next project.” We can’t imagine how he’s going to work “consumerist” into a rhyme, but okay. After the story went Digg-public last Friday, Tonedeff got a call from a Gibson rep Saturday morning—and a few days later he received an apology from Gibson’s CEO personally.

Well, this past Tuesday, I had a one-on-one conversation with Gibson CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz. Now, it’s rare that a CEO of a company that size will sit down on the phone with you and talk man to man, so for that, I was very impressed with the level of commitment and cooperation they showed in order to demonstrate the level of seriousness with which they took this whole situation. Henry assured me that this was something that Gibson was truly apologetic for and made his best effort to make sure that I came away from the entire experience feeling as though I was treated fairly and received what I deserved.

The next day, Tonedeff received a FedExed check for the full amount of the prize.

The Gibson rep who strung Tonedeff along last year left the company in November:

Henry mentioned that Don was “getting toasted” in the press and hoped that I could encourage folks to “take it easy on the guy” because apparently dude’s been getting hate mail & phone calls up the yang from random folks around the world. I’ve never been the type of person to wish malice or pain on anyone (unless they rap), and I stand by that approach still. Personally, I think the public spanking that’s already occurred is sufficient, considering this is something that will probably come up anytime someone Googles his name for a long time. That would definitely suck if I were him, so it is what it is. So, if anyone was planning on doing any wild shit, this would be a good time to put the bazooka away. Everything is settled.

Finally, Tonedeff tells everyone thanks:

In closing, I want to take this opportunity to thank EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU who took time out to lend your support, write letters, post blogs, make phone calls – once again, you helped settle this thing at lightning speed.